Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · Pan-India

The boon that had a loophole: Hiranyakashipu

Who is in it

The story, beat by beat

  1. Hiranyakashipu performs long austerities to win power over the gods.
  2. Brahma appears and refuses to grant immortality.
  3. The asura asks instead not to die indoors or outdoors, by day or by night, on the ground or in the sky, by any weapon, or by any creature Brahma has made.
  4. Brahma grants it.
  5. Vishnu later takes the man-lion form, which is no creature of Brahma's, and kills him at twilight on a threshold, across his lap, with claws.

boon penance loophole pride

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Bhagavata Purana 7.3.35-38

Pan-India Vaishnava

After a penance so severe that the gods complain, Hiranyakashipu is visited by Brahma, who will give him anything but deathlessness. The asura drafts his own safety: no death inside a dwelling or outside one, in daylight or at night, on the earth or in the air, from any weapon, or from any being that Brahma has created. The creator agrees. Every clause is later turned against him when Vishnu comes as Narasimha, neither man nor beast, at dusk, in a doorway, lifts him onto his knees and opens him with his nails.

Hiranyakashipu — Wikipedia; Brahma's boon — Wisdom Library concept index

Encyclopedia

Shiva Purana variant

Pan-India Shaiva

The Shiva Purana keeps the boon but changes the list: the asura asks to be safe from weapons, thunderbolts, mountains, trees, missiles, water, fire and every living creature. The escape clauses of the Bhagavata are replaced by a catalogue of things that cannot harm him.

What is different here:

A different list of exclusions; the same structure of a boon undone by what it left out.

Hiranyakashipu — Wikipedia

Sources: Hiranyakashipu — Wikipedia; Brahma's boon — Wisdom Library concept index

More stories with the same people

How a tradition frames it

One being, three functions: the Trimurti idea

The Maitri Upanishad names Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu together as portions of one being, matched to the three gunas.
In stone and bronze

Dattatreya: the three natures in one son

The sage Atri and his wife Anasuya earn great merit through their conduct and austerity.
In stone and bronze

The Elephanta bust: Trimurti or Sadashiva?

A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
In stone and bronze

The so-called Trimurti cave at Mahabalipuram

Three Pallava shrines on one platform: Shiva in the centre, Vishnu on the right, and a disputed left shrine read as Brahma by Vogel but as Subrahmanya or Brahmasasta by later scholars; a Durga panel stands beside.
Origin

The golden womb and Prajapati

Before the gods there are only the primordial waters.
Origin

Brahma is born in the golden egg

A golden egg forms in the waters and glows like the sun.
Origin

The lotus from Vishnu's navel

During the dissolution Vishnu lies on the serpent Ananta in the cosmic waters.
Origin

Brahma born from Shiva's right side

Shiva alone exists before the world.